UK Newspaper Websites To Become Nearly Invisible

smooth wombat writes "Various websites have tried to make readers pay for access to select parts of their sites. Now, in a bid to counter what he claims is theft of his material, Rupert Murdoch's Times and Sunday Times sites will become essentially invisible to web users. Except for their home pages, no stories will show up on Google. Starting in late June, Google and other search engines will be prevented from indexing and linking to stories. Registered users will still get free access until the cut off date."

Comments

And nothing of value is lost

[mlts]

People getting news will find other sources, and the advertising revenue will go to whomever to the competition.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If Merdouche doesn't want to offer news for free, he'll be undercut by others who do.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they'll change their mind when traffic to their website nosedives and they lose their advertising revenue; by then it may be too late.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[mlts]

I forgot to list this in my earlier post, but here are the scenarios that will happen with Murdoch delisting his news sites:

1: They get forgotten except by subscribers. Can the news sites make money without ad revenue alone? Can they get by and make profits just on these people? This may cause costs to rise per person to hundreds of dollars a year. If the news site has such a fan base that people would do that, it may work, but people would probably find their news elsewhere. If they are reading from an aggregate like news.google.com, they might not even realize that the Times sites are not present on the list anymore.

2: They become boutique sites like peer reviewed journals. There are a number of academic sites which are pay to play, and cost a hefty fee per PDF article. However, for general news, I don't think people would be interested in this. Maybe for back article research, but not for day to day items.

3: They wise up and start playing ball again. Ad revenue may not be the most money they can get, but compared to no revenue at all, it might be a fruitful decision.

4: They end up in the dust. There are a lot of unemployed journalists, it it wouldn't take much impetus for a startup news site to start up that is lean enough to run on ad revenue, perhaps having additional revenue streams for back article searches. No, this startup news site may not have enough money to pay for an AP wire, but those stories can always be come by other ways.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is nothing of value lost, but finally Murdoch does something good for mankind.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Zocalo]

As I understand it, that's Murdoch's point (or hope, anyway). He's not been able to make enough money off his news sites through advertisement based revenue streams, so now he's going to try and make people pay for the content and make his money that way. That only works if the content is not available for free elsewhere, even if it's only the first paragraph on a news indexer like Google's site as that is all many people would read.

Sure, a lot of people will go elsewhere for their news, but as long as more money comes in from those who are prepared to pay for their content then Murdoch will improve his bottom line, albeit probably by nowhere near the amount he is hoping for. I think we've seen what happens after than with Cable TV; despite paying for the service, you'll start getting more and more adverts anyway because Murdoch is nothing if not a greedy bastard. Unlike with Cable TV however, these adverts will be to logged in and thus trackable users, meaning adverts will be much more targetable and slightly more lucrative to Murdoch.

The scary part is what happens if his model actually works, or at least is better a better source of revenue than the current model? Chances are in that case at least some of the potential alternative news outlets will go the same way and the remaining choices might not exactly be bastions of sound journalism. I suppose there's always the BBC since they are funded by the license fee, but even they appear to have been restricting some overseas access of late to things like iPlayer videos embedded in stories.

Freely available international news coverage is not something that I want to see in the position of being the one eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Harold Halloway]

'Merdouche'! V. good. :)

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[NickFortune]

As I understand it, that's Murdoch's point (or hope, anyway). He's not been able to make enough money off his news sites through advertisement based revenue streams, so now he's going to try and make people pay for the content and make his money that way

I don't believe that. I think he's hoping to lead a newspaper revolution. He wants all newspapers to go paywalled, so he can try and create an artificial scarcity and maintain pre-internet pricing models.

The scary part is what happens if his model actually works, or at least is better a better source of revenue than the current model?

I read somewhere that the Guardian (another UK national paper) reported advertising income from its web site of 40M. If that's true, Murdoch needs upwards of 200,000 weekly subscribers to match that. I can't see that happening. I think people who have that sort of investment in the Times probably take the dead tree edition, and won't want to pay for the information again. He'll get a handful of corporate subscriptions, of course, but even internationally I can't see that equaling lost revenue.

The casual readers, of course, will stay away in droves

Freely available international news coverage is not something that I want to see in the position of being the one eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.

Isn't going to happen. The trouble with the strategy is that it funnels readers (and therefore ad revenue) to the non-participating papers. The more papers that follow Murdoch's lead, the more profitable it becomes to offer ad-supported news. Even if he's successful beyond all reasonable expectations, there's still going to come an equilibrium point.

Unless he's looking at aggressive takeovers of the dissenting papers, of course. But that's only viable if the number of targets is comparatively small, and I doubt he'll get that many buying into his Master Plan.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[RMH101]

5) They make themselves available as paid articles for the iPad, make them glossy enough, and actually make some money, whilst at the same time allowing Google limited access to to their headlines to act as a teaser to draw people in

Not saying it's right, not saying it'll work, just saying the timing is right

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[clang_jangle]

I don't think any (print) newspaper can survive off internet advertising income alone.

Print news has always been funded primarily by advertising. You don't think the Murdoch empire was built on the price of the paper, do you? This is just about RM's greed and envy getting the best of him, because google can sell ads while aggregating content. He's a fool, no-one will even notice his tripe missing.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[VendettaMF]

>> He wants all newspapers to go paywalled, so he can try and create an artificial scarcity and maintain pre-internet pricing models.

In essence he wants laws passed and customary behavior established that ensure that no vehicle may travel without at least 2 standard Buggy Whips and a bag of oats aboard.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[sortius_nod]

He'll find some way of blaming Google then.

The guy has been riding the media wave for some time now, I think he's due for a reality check. This is no longer the 1950's, media houses no longer control the information we get. Adapt or die out.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[siloko]

Yeah it's a bit stupid but then dinosaurs always did have small brains.

I agree it's stupid. But usually stupid stuff is comprehensible or funny - this is neither. I am absolutely incredulous that a multi-million dollar organisation like News International has surveyed the current situation regarding the provision of news and decided the best thing for it is a paywall. It just beggars belief. How the fuck do these guys even feed themselves let alone run a business!?

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[paiute]

>> He wants all newspapers to go paywalled, so he can try and create an artificial scarcity and maintain pre-internet pricing models.

In essence he wants laws passed and customary behavior established that ensure that no vehicle may travel without at least 2 standard Buggy Whips and a bag of oats aboard.

Well, were there not laws passed in some jurisdictions that every horseless carriage had to be preceeded by a man on foot waving a red lantern?

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[dnaumov]

They openly admit they fully expect a 90% drop in userbase. They are however, arguing that since this 10% will now be paying, the end results will be better for their financial success.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[gorzek]

10% is incredibly optimistic. I don't have any studies handy, but I could've sworn typical paywall participation rates were something on the order of 1-2%. Very tiny. Good luck with that, Rupert!

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Or else he'll argue Google is unfairly supporting the competition by indexing their free content. It's pretty clear either way that neither the guy nor any of the people advising him have any idea about the way the new technologies work. Half the time I don't even realise which site I'm reading the news on, I just follow interesting sounding links from Google, and I usually read two or three takes on the story from different sites to ensure I get a more rounded understanding of the real issues, but I rarely go to a specific source site as my first port of call (well, apart from the BBC site). If a bunch of sites disappear from the Google news feed, I probably won't even notice the difference, I certainly won't be tracking them down and paying to subscribe to them (and let's face it, if a user is already coming directly to your site for free news, Google doesn't even enter the equation).

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[delinear]

1-2% when the site has something of particular interest to you. When it's just regurgitating the same stale news as every other site, I can see this being even less. I certainly don't think they'll be able to use the quality of their journalism as a major selling point.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Blue Stone]

He will be undercut by others, but he'll also use his business model failure to attack the BBC: "Unfair competition! An honest businessman like me can't make a go of it with the likes of the BBC supplying news, with it's massive and unfair state subsidy! Do something about it Dave [Cameron (UK PM)] or I'll say nasty things about your party in my many, many [still bought, for some reason] print newspapers! Ya Fuckin' bitch! [The PMs of the UK all want to wiggle their bottoms suggestively for Murdoch].

Hopefully, there'll be enough other newspapers who haven't gone down this route of a paywall who will be able to discredit his (IMO) inevitable lies.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[gorzek]

A very good point. Publications with substantially unique content--scientific journals and the like--can get away with having a paywall because you really won't find the same thing anywhere else. When you're just reporting news and offering commentary, the market is already saturated with innumerable *free* sources. Unless Murdoch is going to have some very unique, in-depth content that you can't find anywhere else, I can't imagine anyone with half a brain would be willing to pay for it.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[thogard]

I suspect he has been talking about the paywall for so long as an attempt to give others enough time to build theirs own too. Any newspaper that competes with him would be silly not to have looked into just in case it works and he gave them enough time to build it. So if he turns his on and reports he is getting subscribers, then others may follow. If he hadn't given them time, they would be forced to survive while competing with everyone else who would be forced to provide free content until they built their own system and by then the real subscribe data would be out.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Saint Fnordius]

You must be an American, or you would have realised that this right to have the costs supported by the general public is enshrined in British law.

It is a common concept throughout Europe that government-sponsored media provides basic services, and that private media are free to compete with it. There is less trust of millionaires to support the common good than there is to trust an elected body. A privately owned press suppresses any report that might harm its owners.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[silentcoder]

>You have a right to news, but you don't have a right to make me pay your bill. Take it out of your own pocket, instead of picking mine.

Typical conservative "didn't read the post" response. I made a very strong argument about why it's SOUND ECONOMIC POLICY to make people subsidize news so everyone can get it. That you GET more than you GIVE when you "pay the bill". In short, I gave a logical argument that you are NOT "paying the bill" but INVESTING the money on a scheme with solid returns. As we share the burden of the investment, so we get to share the benefits of the payout.
But conservatives never figure that out. When a thousand people buy shares in a company - they are paying the companies bills by your logic - and making the CEO rich by raising the share price. But if the company succeeds, they get a massive return on their investment, that's why they do it.
Some things are so valuable, and have such a NEEDED return that we cannot afford the RISK of letting it up to the market, we NEED to make sure it's there EVEN IF IT WON'T MAKE A PROFIT THAT JUSTIFIES THE LEVEL OF INVESTMENT.
Things like public roads - even conservatives generally don't think all roads should be privately run toll roads (only the most extreme of libertarians think that). Why ? Because lots of people being able to get to work easily makes the whole economy stronger, all of them paying toll-fees makes it weaker and makes EVERYONE poorer.
Qualitatively, the gain in the economy from having a road is huge, but smaller than the loss if all roads were toll roads, so it's better to build public roads except in rare cases where the sum on that particular road works out the other way around.

Same thing here - providing news that doesn't cost cash right now, which even an unemployed student can get access to (the people who will be contributing to the economy when you expect it to be growing so your retirement investment doesn't go up in smoke) has massive benefits for society. Denying even one citizen that access can have huge detrimental effects - one vote STILL makes a difference.
Voting right, investing right and knowing when to borrow and when to save - are all things we can ONLY know if we have access to news. The more people have this access, the better the country and the economy is doing - and the benefit of that reaches every member of society.
It's not a subsidy in the long run, it just looks like one if you are as shortsighted as the average American republican. It's an investment.

>You also have a right to a free press, which is not possible when government controls the funds (as is the case with pro-government-leaning PBS). He who holds the funding holds the reins.

That is a false dichotomy. A government funded news source is only detrimental to the availability of a free press if there are laws to prevent competition with it. If private news is available, people who can afford it - will buy it and rightfully expect better quality news.
So the impact on "freedom of the press" is non existent.
Your second statement has nothing to DO with that. That is a DESIRE for unbiassed reporting. Which is stupid because it's impossible. Everybody has bias. The government run news will (usually - there are ways to mitigate this into near non-existence) have a pro-government bias. But the corporate run news will have a corporate bias. Only a faux news believer will imagine that either is unbiassed. The Corporate News will want you to believe that all market regulation is always a bad idea, and suggest that the "hidden hand of the market" (it's not hidden, it's mythological) will somehow prevent things like corporations dumping toxic waste in our drinking water - when history shows that it doesn't.
When there wasn't regulation, they did it. Even after regulation they still do it - but a lot less. Why ? Because the market demands they do it if that's whats cheapest and makes most profit. Because the market's "hand" is extremely shortsighted. We have a thousand corporate scandals a year proving jus

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[icebraining]

You have a right to news, but you don't have a right to make me pay your bill. Take it out of your own pocket, instead of picking mine.

So if I wanted to, I should be able to pay 0 taxes? I should be able to not contribute towards hospitals, roads, schools, fire departments, police, jails, military, public servants, courts?
Would such a system be feasible?

If there's anything on that list that you do believe I should be forced to contribute, why are news different?

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[dwandy]

So what is a company like News Corp do to?

if an aggregator becomes the destination of choice for people instead of the source then the aggregator must be offering something or offering it in some way that the people want and the source does not. If a page is nothing but a set of links then you'll cut out the middle-man and go directly to the source. This is true of even google: you don't google /. , you come here directly. And /. offers a reason for people to keep coming back here instead of El Reg, ZDNet or any of the other popular sites that get linked from here: the comments/discussion. Most articles on the front page still get hundreds of comments and there is generally pretty good discussion.

So what should a company like News Corp do? Instead of cutting itself off from the public (it's readership) give them a reason to go directly to the site instead of the aggregator. The content alone is not sufficient reason: I can get "the news" from dozens of sources (which is another problem for another post), what a successful company does (all of them, not just news) is give people a Reason To Buy.
This is pretty basic Business-101, and that it's uncommon wisdom for a billionaire businessman shows how far from competition we've fallen.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[OttoErotic]

I think you missed the crux of my argument: I don't care what happens to the rest of you, people are idiots who get what they deserve, and I just want to be left alone. Unless you're hot and single, in which case I'll believe whatever you want me to believe.

Unless you're looking for a legitimate conversation about this? If so, I'm up for that.

Basically yes, I believe that anarchy should be the long term goal of any society. I think that government is a crutch that's there to protect us from our own animal nature, but over-reliance on that crutch has kept people from developing the ethical sense to deal with one another decently without needing a big brother to keep us in line. I don't need to be forced to treat people decently, I do it because it's the right thing to do, but I'll acknowledge that society still needs a little hand-holding. But people don't have any motivation to learn how to cope with one another as equals as long as there's this artificial outsider restraining their actions. We're like kids on the playground, wanting to fight while the teacher holds us back. There are times when you need that teacher to restrain you, but in the long-term you eventually have to learn how to deal with people without fighting; that lesson will inevitably be long, painful, and chaotic, but it's better than growing to adulthood any self-control or recognition that the person you violently disagree with has that right to be 'wrong'.

The root of every single problem out there is simple: people are assholes. And the current setup does absolutely nothing to address that root problem, because government and its institutions only address the symptoms. Need roads? Let's build them on taxes, and in 50 years we'll figure out how to deal with all the subsequent problems that those roads enable, rather than allow people to develop alternatives at their own pace (like: reducing the need for those roads by living and working in real living communities; building our communities based on mass- or alternate-transit). People lose money on the stock market? Regulate it, until it's so 'safe' that people become dependent on it for their retirement and the power structure of the country shifts into the hands of those who grew rich off of this artificially safe system; maybe if the stock market had been left as the wild west, we wouldn't be dealing with billionaires like Murdoch in the 1st place (I, for one, would in that case be far more likely to invest my money in a community-based company that I knew and trusted, rather than some faceless, immoral corporation).

Don't get me wrong, I don't propose throwing off all the safeguards that are in place to protect us from these kinds of corporatists. I certainly don't think that anarchy means you just turn off the lights and let people slaughter each other. I'm no corporatist myself, and I don't think you can look at someone like BP and say "this is the effect of a free market system". Everyone is quick to jump on corporate corruption as a demonstration of the flaws of capitalism, but the current state of affairs looks nothing like what a real free market system would have become. The bloated malevolent corporations that we deal with today are the result of government safeguards, not something that's managed to develop in spit of that regulation. Government intervention in general causes at least as many problems down the road as it fixes right now, not least of which is that as people become reliant on that protective mechanism, they stop asking "is this right or wrong" and only ask whether it's legal or illegal; how is it possible that our moral sense has evolved so little over the last 2000 years? Why are we at heart the same assholes we were when we lived in caves?

Anyways, that's my ideal. In the real world however, yes, I'm fine with the Somali ending where the world ends with a bang, because I think that people have proven over, and over, and over again that they simply don't deserve any better than what they have. I'm perfectly content sipping a drink on the patio while the world degenerates into chaos, because every day I meet someone stupider than the day before and think we're just that little bit more doomed anyways.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[KingSkippus]

I'm just not interested in it anymore and don't want to foot the bill, regardless of whether or not it benefits the public

Well, too damn bad. You don't get to have it both ways. Guess what. I've been paying for your butt for years. And your philosophy is that now that you've sucked off the teat of government for however many years you've been around, and whether you admit it or not, likely will for many years to come, you don't want to fulfill the implicit obligation that it entailed to pitch in to help provide those services for others?

Yeah, I don't subscribe to this philosophy. Have you ever bought something on credit? If so, once you got whatever it was you bought, did you explain to the credit company that you're just not interested in making payments any more? How did that work out for you? Because that's exactly how our government works. We pay to make sure that basic infrastructure services are available from you from the time you're born. We make sure you have electricity, running water, education, roads to travel on, clean air, more education, safety regulations to make sure your employer doesn't try to kill you with malice or gross negligence (because I assure you that they operate on the same philosophy you do). We protect your home from robbers, put out fires if you're dumb enough to smoke in bed, pay for your medical care if you're indigent, subsidize research to improve your quality of life, provide a means of redress if someone else causes you harm, defend you from terrorists (using one of the largest Socialist organizations in the world, incidentally), and do so many other things for you that it would be impossible to list them all here.

And now, after all of that, you don't want to foot the bill?

...the public doesn't actually do anything useful with all the information they're given

Maybe you don't do anything useful with the information. I do. Stop trying to project your own shortcomings on everyone else.

Hell, maybe if the tax dollars used for the Eisenhower interstate system had gone to private R&D I might have my flying car by now.

We tried it that way once. We ended up with things like systemic oppression, children working in factories, gross health and safety violations in the workplace, and... Aw, hell, never mind. You just keep dreaming that things would be better without a government. Better yet, travel to some places that, as the other poster pointed out, does not have a strong government. There are many places that you can live free of U.S. government tyranny. Let me know how that works out for you. I think I like it better our way.

People like you kill me. You're so delusional, thinking that you're so self-sufficient, that you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, that government is just dragging your down, an obstacle to be overcome. You have no friggin' clue.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[NeutronCowboy]

It's pretty clear either way that neither the guy nor any of the people advising him have any idea about the way the new technologies work.

Do not underestimate him. I'm pretty sure he has a very good understanding of technology, even if it is on the level of "the internet is a series of tubes". What he's aiming for is help from legislators who understand little of the newspaper business and even less of the internet, but who understand that he is a successful bigwig who is contributing lots of money to their campaigns and local economy.

The endgame here is full and complete control over information, in the vein of the hot news ruling regarding stock recommendations by the big investment houses. I.e., liability for copyright infringement would be so high for news aggregators that no one would do it - including Google, and where news organizations like BBC and PBS are forced behind a paywall through laws designed to "level the playing field."

The guy is the epitome of the corporate sociopath - he will ruin the world if it nets him a few more millions.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[MrNemesis]

I've been wanting to post this for a while:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1aZcsY-O8Q

Comes from a sketch show called A Bit of Fry and Laurie starring, you might have guessed, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. The clip shows that Murdoch has been slinging mud at the BBC since the dawn of ti... well, since the early 90's when Sky TV was getting a foothold. It's a tad exaggerated, but the thought of a UK without a BBC and full of Murdochian bile fills me with dread.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[Joe Jay Bee]

The Guardian is a hate rag too and mouth-piece for man hating militant feminists.

Perhaps many years ago, but I've never read such a thing in the paper in the 6 years I've been reading it.

Re:And nothing of value is lost

[zuperduperman]

I think they are incredibly optimistic.

Do you know the main reason I read the local newspaper here? Because everyone else does. It's discussed among friends, on the radio, on television, all over the place.

It is the network effect. And when you cut 90% of the network out, you don't end up with 10%, you end up with zero because people simply all go and congregate somewhere else where, once again, they can all be together.

It is amazing to see the desperate competition of new players trying to get into the social networking space and contrast it with the old time dinosaurs who are working as fast as they can to destroy their own assets in the same space.

Invisibility means no readers

[jonfr]

If Times and Sunday Times are going to be come invisible on the internet. They should prepare them self for closing down there web pages as a next logical step.

If nobody can find you on the internet, nobody is going to read you too. There drop in traffic is going to measure up, and make someone else popular instead.

Re:Invisibility means no readers

[jimicus]

Not necessarily.

Let us assume for the time being that the Times' website is losing money hand over fist. This is a perfectly valid assumption - hell, the print version of the times hasn't made money in years.

In which case, switching to a paid subscription will do a few things:

1. Drastically reduce traffic to the website. This may actually be a good thing because it means all of a sudden the amount of infrastructure (and associated cost) required to host it will plummet.

2. Give a consistent, known amount of revenue per reader. Mr. Murdoch probably only needs a few thousand customers worldwide for it to have been worthwhile - and if he's got any brains at all, he'll have streamlined the operation such that news that is printed is selected and brought into the website in a fairly automatic process which means the site just sits there doing its thing 90% of the time. Considering the amount it costs to buy a UK paper abroad (usually three or four times the cover price, assuming you can find one and it isn't a week old), there may well be enough ex-pats who think that £2/week is a good deal.

Put another way, do you as a /. reader think Rupert Murdoch is an idiot? He's an idiot who is almost certainly worth about a million times what you are, and I guarantee quite a few businesses which put news content on the web will be watching this very closely. If he's right (and I accept it's a big if), he'll turn the website from a loss-leader into a quiet little machine that just sits in the corner ticking over and making a fair bit of money. Once that happens, there won't be a quiet movement of other news sites going pay-as-you-read. There'll be a stampede.

Re:Invisibility means no readers

[sznupi]

Or it will simply make people read BBC (which is most likely way at the top already) more often; considering they are also one of the most sensible news services on the web, I can see only benefits.

Re:Invisibility means no readers

[dzfoo]

So the "web news" will cease to be the traditional, journalistic news, and will be replaced by casual "bloggers"?

I think there is a chance that this strategy will work. Considering that Mr. Murdoch has traditionally been a smart and cunning business man, I think he expects this too.

However, nothing remains the same forever, and better models may evolve. Therefore, to think that this would spell the end of the free Interwebs or society or anything like that is just plain stupid. For instance, it may come to pass that some publishers would like to expand their market share, so they may make deals with aggregators to offer "teasers" and deep-link to their content as loss-leaders--but this time at more reasonable terms for them, so that both sides make money out of it.

>> People want something to read on the Internet in the morning,

You forget one thing, there was a time when people didn't have "something to read on the Internet in the morning," yet the world turned, the sun rose and set, and people purchased subscriptions of bought their newspapers at the corner newsstand. The fact that there was always a guy at the traffic light giving out his self-published periodical for free did not much sway those that wanted more substantive and professional publications.

People only want something to read on the Internet in the morning for free, because currently it is free; they are just used to this. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is not sustainable, so it may change soon. People will adapt and the world will continue turning, the sun rising and setting, and someone will make money.

          -dZ.

Re:Invisibility means no readers

[squiggleslash]

Put another way, do you as a /. reader think Rupert Murdoch is an idiot?

I don't think that, but I do think it's possible for someone to be smart about some things, and not terribly knowledgeable or understanding of something else. One of the issues the Internet has had since its explosion has been the number of established industries (and successful people associated with those industries) that suddenly found it a threat. These people, from studio bosses to booksellers, weren't idiots, they got where they were by knowing their industries inside out, but how to deal with the free flow of information itself became a particular issue they were ill-equipped to manage.

Murdoch, thus far, has a terrible record with the Internet. While Fox News might have more viewers than CNN or MSNBC, its website is one of the least popular. While Murdoch can't be blamed, given the recentness of the acquisition, for the WSJ's low presence compared to, say, the NYT, the UK situation is staggering with the Guardian's website attracting 37 million unique visitors every month, vs the Time's less than 20M. Try as I may, I can't think of a single online operation primarily managed by Murdoch that's attracted any serious level of serious success compared to its direct rivals.

It's possible Murdoch will turn that around, but it's hard to see how removing your sites from Google and discouraging bloggers from deep linking can help you in the short or long term. Even if the aim is to change every hundred free readers into one paying subscriber and become successful that way, is it probable that this would work? Is the Times of such perceived high quality by a substantial number of people that those people would chose it and chose to pay for it over a high quality free alternative like The Guardian? Can The Times survive if the only people reading it are those who have already heard of it, and haven't gotten into the habit of reading an easier to find quality news website?

Do I think Murdoch "gets" the Internet? No. I suspect News International will, eventually, figure out how to work with it, but it may require an individual who knows more than centralized media to do it. Murdoch, just about, knows centralized media. Even there, his skills tend to be overstated: Murdoch's business plan within centralized media has always been fairly simple: run profitable populist media enterprises (The Sun, Fox, Fox News, etc), and run one or two loss making "serious" journals to ensure he has higher level political clout. Murdoch's skills are with populist, low-end, centralized media. I wouldn't assume he knows how to monetize news on the Internet any more than I'd expect Einstein to run a movie studio.

And something of value is gained

[AliasMarlowe]

People will be less likely to come across Murdoch tripe on the web. This is a Good Thing, as it should reduce the number of victims of his misinformation.

Google are stealing by adding value?

[Rogerborg]

This is weapons grade idiocy in action. Murdoch chose to make the material freely available, inviting anyone with a web browser to come and read it. Google merely advertised its existence, to his benefit and ours, hooking up browsers with the content. And simple because Google could find a way to make money from the value they added (to both producer and consumer!) what they are doing is "theft"?

The Murdochs of this word are dinosaurs, moaning in hunger-maddened anger as the forests give way to grassland that they're not equipped to browse on. If dinosaurs had had lawyers, they've had sued the grass for displacing the cycads.

Re:Google are stealing by adding value?

[Elky Elk]

I don't think he's as much of a kingmaker as he'd like to think. His UK papers change alligance once its obvious who will win the next election, then pretend it was their support that swung it. Faulty cause and effect.

And nothing of value is lost...

[_Shad0w_]

Considering the newspapers News International publishes, I don't really consider this a loss. The less of "The Sun" and "News Of The World" seen on-line the better, really; only the "The Times" and "Sunday Times" could really be considered any kind of a loss.

Now if only we could get "The Daily Mail" to follow suit.

kthxbye

[wickerprints]

Ever since Google News debuted, I've been trying to figure out a way to block Murdoch's evil media empire content from being shown, just so that I don't accidentally click on any of his links. I'm very glad to see that he's going to do it for me.

Re:Actual plan or threat?

[Jafafa Hots]

I don't consider it a threat, I consider it a gift.

The start of a positive trend.

[VendettaMF]

If only Fox and CNN can be persuaded to follow suit with their websites, and maybe move their televised channels to a subscription model as well.

Re:ineffectual posturing

[timmarhy]

the problem is the quality of what they are reporting is so low now days most people who would pay for it are too distracted by video's of monkeys shitting on youtube to buy it anymore.

The difference between price and value

[petes_PoV]

People are willing to pay for the paper edition because it gives them several benefits over the same content on a website edition. The biggest is convenience: you can take the content with you and read it where ever you happen to be. No need for batteries, internet connections. You can read it in normal daylight and you don't get reflections off the screen (who decided that matte screens were a bad idea, so that all you can buy now are glossy ones that are impossible to view?).

You can read it on the train, you can read it on the lavatory - and if you run out of toilet paper ..... there's something else you can't do with a laptop. You can even line your parrot's cage with it.

What Murdoch is about to find out is that the value people place on the content is quite small, especially when most of it is celebrity gossip, ill-informed and bigoted columnists and rants disguised as stories - written purely to promote the owner's politics. The real value of the newspaper is it's ease of use. Once you take that away the disadvantages of a web-only publication far outweigh the lower price. He will also find out that just because news costs money to gather, script and present doesn't mean that people are willing to pay that cost and that presentation is a much bigger part of the deal.

Re:Actual plan or threat?

[dzfoo]

I believe this is what he is currently planning on doing. It shows that he is putting his money where his mouth is, for all those, in Slashdot or elsewhere, who demanded that he do this in order to prove that it wasn't just the loud musings of a crazy old fart.

He may be crazy, but he is showing that he really believes in what he is saying, and is willing to explore non-traditional means in order to find a viable business model for web publication.

Even if this proves successful, it is still A Good Thing; he is not decrying the advent of the Internet and claiming that newspapers have a right to exist (he could just get out of the Internet completely and try to survive off-line, but he is not doing this). He is actually embracing the Internet, or trying to. In essence, he is confirming with his actions that traditional print media may be obsolete and that the Internet is the new medium to exploit; it is just a matter of finding the proper, sustainable business model.

We have not yet, and this may not be it, but I am positive that whatever model arises eventualy, it will not be free-for-all, come-as-you-go, user-generated, hippie-lovey content.

      -dZ.

Murdoch's rags to become invisible? FANTASTIC

[phands]

Murdoch is a dinosaur. Now, if we can just get his printed stuff off the racks as well, the world would be a better place. Seriously - if all the scumbag red-tops follow suit, the world would improve.

Re:A great disturbance in the Force?

[Nuskrad]

He will buy BBC? How exactly?
Exactly, it's a ridiculous assertion. I mean, the only way he could have any effect on the BBC is if he were to use his vast media empire to influence an election and support a party hostile to the BBC. Thank God THAT never happened!

Re:Who owns the NY Post?

[Eunuchswear]

It'll make it interesting when Slashdot has to start putting up stories from niche websites instead of mainstream if they all go behind paywalls.

Niche?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

If the tories had won the election maybe he'd of been able to get Dave from PR to close down the BBC, but they didn't, and even Dave may have had problems getting rid of the Graundiad.

Re:How long will it last?

[hattig]

There are a lot of British ex-pats (5.5 million http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6210358.stm). If the Times can get one in ten to pony up for a website subscription (with kindle/iPad/iPhone access) for a quid or two a week then they will get direct income of £25m-£50m/year. I assume they can probably also get the same amount of subscribers within the country. They will probably lose any income from paper-based versions of the newspaper to these people, but sales were probably low with the ex-pats already, and most of the cost of a paper version is the paper and printing itself.

The things that derails this grand plan is the other, ad-funded, websites that will provide the same news to these people. Will The Guardian (making money from their ad-funded website) risk losing it all (£40m a year according to a post above) by becoming a paysite? Not at all.

I look forward to Murdoch's other papers going behind a paywall and effectively removing their vile rhetoric from the public internet.

Re: "analysis of the situation by proper writers"

[Joce640k]

Murdoch? The same guy who bought one of the best newspapers in the world and turned it into a gossip-rag? He's going to employ proper writers to write for his audience? LOL!

I'd love it

[ThatsNotPudding]

if Google News was finally disinfected from the Fox News comtamination. I dumped it long ago as it become obvious that Google was either complicit or clueless about Fox News gaming the system to have their propagandistic headlines appear on any story even tangentially connected to US politics. For all pratcial purposes, Google News is now equivalent to The Drudge Report and is of no interest to me.

nail in newspapers coffin

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the "reporting" I've seen lately is little more than bias and opinion wrapped in malice without regard or even search for facts. I use newspaper articles to demonstrate bad editing and bad journalism to students.

Bloggers at least have the excuse that they are individuals without any significant resources. There is no excuse for newspapers presenting fiction as fact, not citing sources, not using qualifiers, and deliberately using headlines which misrepresent the content. Congratulations. I've been waiting quite some time for newspapers to die the death they so richly deserve. Maybe something worthwhile will rise from the ashes.

Enema?

[HalAtWork]

I guess Merdouche translated from French to English means "enema"?

Re:Enema?

[jandersen]

Hmmm.. "Public Enema Number One". I like that.

Indeed. And they got it wrong

[Kupfernigk]

Cameron is no fool; he may be a PR man but he has a first class degree from Oxford. So does one of my kids, so I know how hard that is to do. And what he saw was that Murdoch tried to swing the UK election and failed. In the UK, Murdoch has shot his bolt. Politicians know he cannot deliver. And Cameron depends on Clegg, and the Lib Dems have constantly been rubbished by Murdoch. It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, and that man is Keith Rupert Murdoch. Because he has been seen to have no clothes.